Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman at the launch of the new Doors iPad app

Jac Holzman is 81. He founded Elektra Records, signed The Doors, Carly Simon and The Stooges among other artists, and played a significant role in the early days of the CD as a music format.

He should be a dinosaur, railing against new technology, piracy and the decline of the recorded music industry – if that's your preferred stereotype for an old-school label executive.

Instead, he's sat down with The Guardian praising the internet's ability to disintermediate labels; claiming the music industry was "stupid" to sue Napster rather than partner with it; and giving a sharp summary of App Store dynamics at a time when music execs half his age still look blank when you mention Angry Birds.

"The App Store has a hierarchy of success. The first layer is games, and the second layer is utilitarian applications. Weather, atomic clock, all those things," he says. "Number three is free apps. And music is stuck some place below number 25, because nobody's really tried to make a good app."

Which brings us neatly to the reason Holzman hasn't retired. He's spent the last year and a half leading the development of an official iPad app for The Doors, which tells the band's story through articles, photos, videos, music clips and even a graphic novel.

It sits somewhere between a box-set, a coffee-table book and a DVD, and it's very good indeed, whether you're a hardcore Doors fan or a more-casual admirer.

Holzman says the project started when he visited the offices of "various senior executives" at Warner Music Group, and noticed that the box-sets on top of their bookshelves had never been opened. "The box was perhaps more attractive than the music!" he says.

"These things are gorgeous: you've got DVDs, CDs, maybe LPs, text and photographs. But none of it ties together: the CD is not synced to the text or the photographs. That makes no sense at all. Far more value is added when you pull all of that together and screw the box!

The Doors for iPad shares some content with a box-set, but really it's a different beast: instead of being expensive and limited-edition, it's available in unlimited numbers as a digital app, and costs £2.99. "Spread it wider and spread it thinner in terms of price," as Holzman puts it.

He goes on to describe the project as a labour of love, as Warner gave him the freedom to pull together a team of archivists, editors and developers – including UK agency Brandwidth, which is also responsible for an impressive Led Zeppelin e-book released for iOS in April.

"I found myself working every day, without a holiday for close to a year and a half to get this thing done," says Holzman. "The more involved and the more interested you get, the more material you have to spread, edit and curate."

The app certainly has depth: articles by music journalist David Fricke about the making of each Doors album; scanned memorabilia; a timeline setting the band in its historical context; video commentaries and song samples – which switch out for full tracks for fans who have them already stored on the iPad.

It looks like it was expensive to put together, but Holzman prefers not to give the exact cost. "Let's just say it costs what it takes to make a good album when going about it the right way," he says. "But without the excesses!"

Holzman adds that the app aims to appeal to the keenest Doors fans "who think they know everything" as well as newer fans just discovering the band for the first time.

"This is a 1,500-piece Doors puzzle, in three dimensions, comma, elegantly pre-assembled. But the beauty of it is you can deconstruct it and go to the part you want," he says.

"The app toolbox lets us do things we cannot do in a book or any linear format. I wanted to see how far you could take the Doors story. It's particularly pregnant with interesting things, and we got 'em all in!"

Holzman adds that the app will be a "living product", updated regularly both to correct any mistakes and to add new content if it becomes available. "That's our covenant with our customer," he says.

Holzman certainly bucks the stereotype of the record-label dinosaur fighting change. He was a director of Pioneer Electronics in the early days of the CD and laserdisc formats, and also a board member at Atari in the mid-1970s.

"It helps to have, not so much a foot in each camp [of music and technology] as being willing to embrace it, mix it all up and see what comes out of it," he says.

"People in music have for the most part been very resistant to the digital age because they were protecting the interests that they had. Fighting Napster was a stupid mistake: Napster was a gift if we had used it properly."

Holzman is disarmingly honest about the music industry's strategy in the early days of CDs, noting that labels were overjoyed at the fact that "you could sell the whole catalogue all over again at twice the price". Yet he says he warned his peers of the consequences at the time.

"I said two things: everybody who has one of these [CDs] has a master copy in their home, and there is a secondary market for them," he says. "With digital, we let the cat out of the bag a long time ago, and it was the right thing to do."

He is similarly positive about the impact the internet can have for musicians, even those fretting about piracy, or lower payouts from streaming services like Spotify.

"The internet provides a feedback loop: a continuing conversation between an artist and their audience, not intermediated by gatekeepers who have something to sell," he says.

"I'm not against record companies. I think record companies who are sensitive, artist-oriented and willing to take chances are a very good choice for some artists, who don't have the energy and inclination to figure out who their audience is."

He continues: "But the internet provides what every artist needs: the opportunity to woodshed, to practise stuff in front of people, send them samples and get feedback. It's a wonderful way to learn, to intuit what moves your audience."

The Doors make a good subject for an app: an iconic band with a catalogue of well-known albums, plenty of incident in their career (to say the least) and a few decades' distance from the present day for critics to make sense of their career and music.

What about newer artists who don't have that? Do apps have a role to play for them? "Without telling you how, apps are in every artist's future. That's what's coming next!" twinkles Holzman, who sees plenty of untapped potential in the idea of albums as apps.

"I think that is a very valid concept, as long as you remember how fluid the app is, and that you adjust that fluidity to the essence of the artist," he says. "If the labels don't understand the essence of the artist, how can they connect good music to willing ears?"

Two hours after the interview, Holzman regales a room full of journalists at the app's official press launch, cheerfully fielding questions on technology and music alike.

It's then that he comes back to The Doors, and why he wanted to make an app rather than just another box-set or coffee-table book. "The Doors are not about the generation of the 60s. The Doors are a group that doesn't age," he says.

"The interest in them regenerates constantly: for every generation, a large portion of it gets into the Doors. So this app is for those young people too."

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